Painting the Forth Bridge

No pictures this week as the only job I've been doing is painting the shingles when I get a chance.  It's been a busy week, without much time for dollshousing.

For such a little house, painting the shingles has felt a bit like painting the Forth bridge: endless.  I've done several coats, only to turn the house to a new angle and discover new unpainted crevices.  I've just finished what I hope is the definitive and final coat, and I put a bright worklamp between my eyes and my paintbrush, so that I could look extremely closely at the roof and really work the paint into all the cracks.

DS is suggesting that I add some realism by drybrushing the roof in a different colour, or highlighting some of the shingles in different shades of green.  I'm a bit worried that introducing too much colour will distract from the appearance of such a small house, but I might experiment a bit on a small corner of the roof.  I was thinking that drybrushing with grey might make the roof look a bit weathered.

I spraypainted a coat of white primer onto the trim that I will use to trim off the edges of the roof gables, but I still need to paint it all with white emulsion to match the house.

I also spent three hours on Tuesday night relocating the house off of the dining table, and onto the little picnic table because DS had invited three friends over for Friday supper.  It took quite a while to shovel through four months worth of accumulated tools, materials, paint bottles, wood scraps, wallpaper etc., and find new homes for it all. A lot of it is currently on the floor of my bedroom, in case I need it again during the remainder of the build.  The little picnic table feels small and makes me feel sad that I don't have a proper studio to work in, but I expect I will get used to it.  There aren't any really big messy jobs left now, just lots of trimming out to do, so I don't really need any more working room than I have.

I'm enjoying watching the Fairfield build on the Looking Glass Miniature blog.  She has a neat idea for using fancy trim scissors to cut edging for shelves, fireplaces, windowseats etc. which I think I may have to copy, it looks really cool.